The most common way to use this is through ‘EVE’, which is a firehose approach where all these logs go into a single file.

# Extensible Event Format (nicknamed EVE) event log in JSON format-eve-log:enabled:yesfiletype:regular#regular|syslog|unix_dgram|unix_stream|redisfilename:eve.json#prefix: "@cee: " # prefix to prepend to each log entry# the following are valid when type: syslog above#identity: "suricata"#facility: local5#level: Info ## possible levels: Emergency, Alert, Critical,## Error, Warning, Notice, Info, Debug#redis:# server: 127.0.0.1# port: 6379# async: true ## if redis replies are read asynchronously# mode: list ## possible values: list|lpush (default), rpush, channel|publish# ## lpush and rpush are using a Redis list. "list" is an alias for lpush# ## publish is using a Redis channel. "channel" is an alias for publish# key: suricata ## key or channel to use (default to suricata)# Redis pipelining set up. This will enable to only do a query every# 'batch-size' events. This should lower the latency induced by network# connection at the cost of some memory. There is no flushing implemented# so this setting as to be reserved to high traffic suricata.# pipelining:# enabled: yes ## set enable to yes to enable query pipelining# batch-size: 10 ## number of entry to keep in buffertypes:-alert:# payload: yes # enable dumping payload in Base64# payload-buffer-size: 4kb # max size of payload buffer to output in eve-log# payload-printable: yes # enable dumping payload in printable (lossy) format# packet: yes # enable dumping of packet (without stream segments)http:yes# enable dumping of http fieldstls:yes# enable dumping of tls fieldsssh:yes# enable dumping of ssh fieldssmtp:yes# enable dumping of smtp fields# Enable the logging of tagged packets for rules using the# "tag" keyword.tagged-packets:yes# HTTP X-Forwarded-For support by adding an extra field or overwriting# the source or destination IP address (depending on flow direction)# with the one reported in the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header. This is# helpful when reviewing alerts for traffic that is being reverse# or forward proxied.xff:enabled:no# Two operation modes are available, "extra-data" and "overwrite".mode:extra-data# Two proxy deployments are supported, "reverse" and "forward". In# a "reverse" deployment the IP address used is the last one, in a# "forward" deployment the first IP address is used.deployment:reverse# Header name where the actual IP address will be reported, if more# than one IP address is present, the last IP address will be the# one taken into consideration.header:X-Forwarded-For-http:extended:yes# enable this for extended logging information# custom allows additional http fields to be included in eve-log# the example below adds three additional fields when uncommented#custom: [Accept-Encoding, Accept-Language, Authorization]-dns:# control logging of queries and answers# default yes, no to disablequery:yes# enable logging of DNS queriesanswer:yes# enable logging of DNS answers# control which RR types are logged# all enabled if custom not specified#custom: [a, aaaa, cname, mx, ns, ptr, txt]-tls:extended:yes# enable this for extended logging information# custom allows to control which tls fields that are included# in eve-log#custom: [subject, issuer, fingerprint, sni, version, not_before, not_after, certificate, chain]-files:force-magic:no# force logging magic on all logged files# force logging of checksums, available hash functions are md5,# sha1 and sha256#force-hash: [md5]#- drop:# alerts: yes # log alerts that caused drops# flows: all # start or all: 'start' logs only a single drop# # per flow direction. All logs each dropped pkt.-smtp:#extended: yes # enable this for extended logging information# this includes: bcc, message-id, subject, x_mailer, user-agent# custom fields logging from the list:# reply-to, bcc, message-id, subject, x-mailer, user-agent, received,# x-originating-ip, in-reply-to, references, importance, priority,# sensitivity, organization, content-md5, date#custom: [received, x-mailer, x-originating-ip, relays, reply-to, bcc]# output md5 of fields: body, subject# for the body you need to set app-layer.protocols.smtp.mime.body-md5# to yes#md5: [body, subject]-ssh-stats:totals:yes# stats for all threads merged togetherthreads:no# per thread statsdeltas:no# include delta values# bi-directional flows-flow# uni-directional flows#- netflow

Each alert, http log, etc will go into this one file: ‘eve.json’. This file
can then be processed by 3rd party tools like Logstash or jq.

EVE can output to multiple methods. regular is a normal file. Other
options are syslog, unix_dgram, unix_stream and redis.

Output types:

filetype:regular#regular|syslog|unix_dgram|unix_stream|redisfilename:eve.json#prefix: "@cee: " # prefix to prepend to each log entry# the following are valid when type: syslog above#identity: "suricata"#facility: local5#level: Info ## possible levels: Emergency, Alert, Critical,## Error, Warning, Notice, Info, Debug#redis:# server: 127.0.0.1# port: 6379# async: true ## if redis replies are read asynchronously# mode: list ## possible values: list|lpush (default), rpush, channel|publish# ## lpush and rpush are using a Redis list. "list" is an alias for lpush# ## publish is using a Redis channel. "channel" is an alias for publish# key: suricata ## key or channel to use (default to suricata)# Redis pipelining set up. This will enable to only do a query every# 'batch-size' events. This should lower the latency induced by network# connection at the cost of some memory. There is no flushing implemented# so this setting as to be reserved to high traffic suricata.# pipelining:# enabled: yes ## set enable to yes to enable query pipelining# batch-size: 10 ## number of entry to keep in buffer

The example above rotates eve-log each 30 seconds. This could be replaced with
30m to rotate every 30 minutes, 30h to rotate every 30 hours, 30d
to rotate every 30 days, or 30w to rotate every 30 weeks.

outputs:-eve-log:json:# Sort object keys in the same order as they were insertedpreserve-order:yes# Make the output more compactcompact:yes# Escape all unicode characters outside the ASCII rangeensure-ascii:yes# Escape the '/' characters in string with '\/'escape-slash:yes

All these flags are enabled by default, and can be modified per EVE instance.